I'll Pick Fire for $600, Alex

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
                                        Robert Frost

 

In the above picture, fire burns on the Hill of Kronos next to the site of ancient Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic Games, in southwestern Greece on Sunday, Aug. 26, 2007. Hundreds of fires have ravaged the cradle of Western Civilization in recent days. According to the news website myWay:

A top prosecutor ordered an investigation Monday into whether this summer's arson attacks in Greek forests could be considered terrorism, the Public Order Ministry said............snip

 

Greece has been ravaged by hundreds of massive wildfires since Friday that have left at least 61 people dead. The country also suffered fires in June and July, although they were not nearly on the same scale.

 

Government officials have said they suspect at least some of the blazes have been caused by arson.

 

Trying to add terrorism to the mix seems a little over the top, kinda like something that the skelator, Mikey Chertoff, might do. Anyone accused of starting, especially purposely, any of these fires could be charged with homicide and isn't that a serious enough charge?

 

Another Rat Jumps Ship

 

Speaking of Mikey the Skull, Israel's point man in the US, rumor has it that he will be nominated to replace Gone Gonzo as Attorney General following Torture Boy's somewhat surprising resignation (reluctantly accepted by the Draft-Dodger in Chief this weekend).

 

Maybe it is time for Gonzo to go inspect Gitmo, from the INSIDE of a cell.

 

I just hope that the next Attorney General is a person who understands the core mission in the Justice Department is not to play politics, it is to enforce the law. And it's to give the president hard advice that he sometimes doesn't want to hear like, 'Mr. President, you can't do that, it's not constitutional'

David Iglesias
Fired Former US Attorney, New Mexico

 

Over at FireDogLake guest blogger Marisa Trevino discusses what Alberto COULD have been and how he failed Latinos everywhere as well as himself and the Constitution of the United States in He Let Us All Down. Instead of truly following and living the American Dream:

 

He chose to turn a blind eye to “truth and justice” and the whole world witnessed what a lap dog with a Hispanic surname sounds like when trying to defend acts of torture, or the mistreatment of prisoners, or the firing of nine U.S. attorneys because they had the misfortune of not belonging to the right party.

 

Someday the names Gonzales, Rove, Cheney and events like Katrina or 9/11 will likely have the same resonance that Boss Tweed, Jimmy Hoffa, Mayor Daley and Tea Pot Dome have today.

Portable Pianoforte

As I was recently reviewing the Revelstoke Times Review I happened upon the picture to the right (The Music Makers). This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile. As described in the RTR:

 

Harrisen Kaiser (left) and Al Procyshyn teamed up last week to entertain the crowd at the Farmer’s Market. The piano is mounted on a special frame that allows Kaiser to pedal it around city streets. David F. Rooney/Times Review

 

This brought to mind an annual event that used to take place in Kaslo many years ago. Every year we would move Dare Guthrie's upright piano out of the back room of the Village Green Cafe and move it up the hill to the Kaslo Arena for the Langham Benefit. While the piano and the bench were in the back of a pickup Bob "Pussy Fingers" Campbell, keyboardist with the Dreaded Whirlies, would tickle the ivories while the truck took a a couple extra laps around downtown for the amusement and entertainment of the locals. Other news from the Times-Review includes:

 

BC booze sales up

 

B.C. residents and visitors drank their way through more than 380 million litres of alcoholic beverages in the 12 months ended in June, up more than four per cent from the previous year. (Aug 22 2007)

Great 'cosmic nothingness' Found

 

Yesterday the BBC, the New Scientist (Sorry! All the sites in the New Scientist network are down for scheduled maintenance today- Aug 25. Please try again tomorrow ) and other websites and publications announced the discovery of a void/empty spot in space at least 1000 times larger than they had expected to exist. Some highlights from the BBC coverage follow below.

 

Astronomers have found an enormous void in space that measures nearly a billion light-years across. It is empty of both normal matter - such as galaxies and stars - and the mysterious "dark matter" that cannot be seen directly with telescopes. ........snip!

 

"If you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take you several years to get to the nearest stars in our own Milky Way galaxy; but if you were to go to this hole and enter one side, you'd have to travel for a billion years before you would get to the other side," he told BBC News.........snip!

 

The void is roughly 6-10 billion light-years away and takes a sizeable chunk out of the visible Universe in its direction.

 

The team used data from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory's VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) to make its discovery. The VLA - which stands for Very Large Array - is a collection of 27 radio telescopes in New Mexico.........snip!

 

The explanation for this may lie in the enigmatic "dark energy" that scientists know so little about but which is said to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe.

 

"In essence, this latest study gives us a very elegant demonstration of the existence of dark energy in a way which is very convincing," commented Professor Carlos Frenk, the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, UK.

 

 

Update:

 

While the website WNN (WorldNewsNetwork) claims the following:

 

The void, which is nearly a billion light years across, is empty of both normal matter and dark matter.

 

Upon closer examination other scientists have detected what appear to be about a half dozen "man-sized" safes in one corner of the billion light years wide void. Closer inspection yet shows that one of the large man safes contains something which seems to be either a mechanical device or a life form (or some combination of the two) that looks like the object in the illustration to the left.

 

So science may be on the verge of solving TWO mysteries. First they may have discovered the "dark matter" that is the source of the "dark energy" AND simultaneously perhaps stumbled onto the secret and "undisclosed" location where Dick Cheney stores the control panel with the joysticks that operate the whole world.

Ain't Science Great?

 

Remember kids, whatever you do..........

 

 

You Tube
Weapon for
Truth

 

(this is from my man kootcoot,
          and is cross posted from FreeSpeechCa.

 

When I first became aware of You Tube, it seemed like a good idea and Google apparently agreed as their acquisition of the dewy cheeked start-up would soon demonstrate to the world (and the instant moguls who had created You Tube). The nifty little web application seemed like such a handy way for folks to share videos of their cats being endearing or to display their own wacky humor to the world. But I must admit that I am pleasantly surprised at how this baby and totally democratic medium has become a weapon in the war against the Corporate Media and the Lies it tries to promulgate.

 

Two recent incidents here in Canada demonstrate some early victories against the likes of GlowBall/Canned West and the Faux News Liars of the airwaves and printed news.

 

The recent protests against the secret agenda of the three North American Clowns at Montebello are the first example I will discuss. I would recommend going over to the Canadian Cynic to pursue an elevated interest in this incident as he has been all over it ever since it happened, telling and showing it like it is/was and de-constructing the reich wingnuts and their blathering around the truth in his Canadian and Cynical style.

 

What occurred, in short, was that the only "demonstrators" that appeared to be agitating for and promoting violence (and carrying rocks to throw) were confronted by other protesters at which time these "violent types" headed FOR the police lines and were taken into custody, without having their masks removed or removing them themselves. Then mysteriously these dudes(the only violent "bad" actors) were released without charges and their identity remained a mystery as well. When protest organizers and others suggested that these "mystery" men were police provocateurs the representatives for the various cops had this to say:

 

The RCMP has refused to comment, while Quebec provincial police have flatly denied that its officers were involved in the incident.

 

It said it is not releasing any names as no charges were laid.

 

Videotape and still photos then flooded the internet, many of them on You Tube, including some that suggested the "violent" rock toting protesters and the police shopped at the same shoe store and had the same sense of style. Eventually we got this from the Quebec Provincial Police who earlier had denied having any "pretend protesters" planted with the real protesters.

 

The RCMP and Quebec police force have denied allegations their officers posed as protesters to try to provoke peaceful demonstrators at the recent Montebello summit.

 

"I confirm (to) you that there is no agents provocateurs in the Surete du Quebec... It doesn't exist in the Surete du Quebec," spokesperson Const. Melanie Larouche told The Canadian Press

 

Lo and behold, now the story starts changing, since so many people were watching so much actual you know "evidence" and believing their lyin' eyes in spite of the fact that Stephen Harper had told them there were only a half dozen demonstrators. By today the statements from the Pork in Uniform are very different than what they had to say at first (when they didn't realize everyone could see for themselves what had happened). The official story now is:

 

Quebec admit they went undercover at Montebello protest

 

Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protests at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.

 

The police came under fire Wednesday when protesters accused the force of planting undercover officers in the demonstration to provoke violence. A video surfaced on YouTube that appeared to depict disguised police in the crowd.

 

The provincial police, in a news release, said its officers went undercover to identify and stop non-peaceful protesters.

 

Somewhat conveniently the Spokesman for Uniformed Pork didn't mention that the only protesters packing and threatening to throw rocks and wearing masks WERE THE UNDERCOVER COPS. But I guess we shouldn't be surprised by that. Even more amusing, as the Cynic (Canadian variety) points out:

 

I'm guessing somebody is going to regret not taking the time to come up with a better lie than this one:

Police said that after viewing the clip, they were able to confirm the men were Quebec provincial police officers.

 

I'm sorry ... the police are saying that they had no idea that the three provocateurs were also police until they watched the YouTube clip? They didn't know that while those three idiots were cavorting around with rocks, while they were being arrested or while they were subsequently being freed without being charged? Not during any of that time!? They're saying that that's how they would normally treat potentially violent demonstrators?

 

This so needs a public inquiry in the worst way. This isn't even remotely close to being over.

 

Switching Yard Accident in PG

 

Prince George Switching Yard (...right!)

 

Early this month an incident occurred that was described in all the media as an accident in the switching yard in Prince George by CN, the Rail Road that never ran a train that it could keep on the track, in BC at least it seems. According to most reports there was no environmental risk, no REALLY dangerous materials, just a minor accident in the yard putting trains together. BC Mary was the citizen journalist all over this one, and she had the help of some local people in Prince George who posted video clips on You Tube, shared photos with us showing clearly that it was more like a train collision on the mainline, on a bank above the Fraser River, close by parks and residential neighborhoods. Oh yeah, I don't know what qualifies as dangerous materials, but when thick black smoke is rising in the air even higher than the 10-15 meter high flames and water bombers need to be called in to fight the fire it ain't exactly just an overheated break drum on a set of wheels.

 

Once again the OFFICIAL CN, BC Government, and GlowBall/Canned West story was shown up as the skein of lies that it was, thanks to the internet and the ease of sharing pictures and videos on You Tube. This is why I think You Tube is more than just an amusing little piece of software, rapidly it is becoming one of the average citizen's best weapons in the important battle to defeat the forces that would like to make George Orwell's nightmares come true. This is just one reason that Net Neutrality is so important, the same media conglomerates that control the so-called Main Stream Media can't be allowed to control the internet too, or we might as well just bow our heads and be fitted for our slave collars.